Friday, April 01, 2011

Many are asking about the mysterious new lead tablets (the Jordan Lead Codices) "suddenly" uncovered that supposedly are going to change the world, proving all sorts of weird things about the first generation of Christianity. I hear according to Glenn Beck, they are the mysterious coded books referred to in the book of Revelation! Holy Sheit!

Not.All the media stories misquote people, and then make wild inferences and represent them as facts (this is a really good example, BTW, of how little you can trust media reports about these sorts of things, so remember this the next time this happens). A noted scholar already proved these were forgeries a year ago. Now they are being bandied about by a couple of New Age loonies pretending to be Indiana Jones and Shortround acting out a Dan Brown novel. I say loonies, because IMO only a lunatic would try this now, given the ease with which they can be proven a forgery, and the fact that these guys knew this a year ago.

I think I heard from the Naked Archeologist or someone that the tablets were found: stuffed in the Holy Grail, wrapped in the Shroud of Turin, hidden in the Ark of the Covenant, sitting in a back corner of Noah's Ark, which was parked on the Tower of Babel, built right square in the middle of the Garden of Eden?

Why is said media silly on this topic and not for example when Libya is shown as a purely humanitarian mission, by the son of man, prince of peace, Obama of America? Appears we are somewhat picky about when the media is silly.

Well, that 'find' was interesting while it lasted! I wondered, as I read the BBC article, why there were no useful details. I guess it doesn't matter now.

But here are some interesting quotes from the BBC piece - interesting in light of the comments on the blog post Richard linked to:

The Israeli Bedouin who currently holds the books has denied smuggling them out of Jordan, and claims they have been in his family for 100 years.

But tests by metallurgists on the badly corroded lead suggest that the books were not made recently.

Never has there been a discovery of relics on this scale from the early Christian movement, in its homeland and so early in its history.

And this is the BBC!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12888421

This is a good lesson about how to read news media. It is not to say that journalists are untrustworthy. It is to say, however, that they don't always have all the facts. Media studies should be compulsory in secondary school.

Robert Deutsch has also posted some interesting analyses on the tablets over at Jim West's blog here: http://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/a-follow-up-by-robert-deutsch-on-the-lead-codices/

Atheists have just been begging and pleading for some Christian groups to jump all over these "discoveries".

Now that it is apparent that most aren't they are admitting that they are fakes, but what they had hoped for was a big bandwagen follwong that they could pull the rug out from under.

Examples? Carrier criticizes Glenn Beck (was that part a joke, Richard? I couldn't find a connection with Google searches), the media, and "New Age loonies" for their gullibility or mendacity regarding the tablets, but doesn't say anything about Christian groups. Who's been begging and pleading?

I'm sure AIGBusted is handling the McGrews' article well enough. But my chapter in The Christian Delusion also already refutes it, if you read and compare the two. But this is off topic here, so any further discussion of it should be moved elsewhere (like maybe my Christian Delusion blog post).